Don't Look Now (1973)

Film: Don't Look Now (1973)

Stars: Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland

Director: Nicolas Roeg

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

"Elevated Horror" is generally considered to be a new concept, or at least a concept that has gained fame in the past decade.  Films like The Babadook and Hereditary are considered to be classic examples of it, to the point where the movies were mocked in Scream V largely because they were seen as being "too fancy."  But "elevated horror" (I know some people hate that term, and it is pretty insulting to the movies that it clearly is trying to distinguish are "not as good") has been around for decades, as is evidenced by our movie today Don't Look Now.  Made in 1973, it was a horror-thriller that would score a series of BAFTA nominations across all major categories.  It was initially well-received, but in the decades since is considered to be a classic of the genre, and one of the best non-slasher horror films of the 1970's.  It also has maybe the most famous sex scene of the decade this side of Last Tango in Paris.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about John Baxter (Sutherland), an architect and his beautiful wife Laura (Christie) who are in Italy after the tragic drowning of their daughter Christine.  Both of them are grief-stricken, but they're trying to handle it in different ways, with John throwing himself deep into his work, while Laura is attempting to find ways of communicating with her daughter.  She does this through a blind medium that she meets, and slowly becomes enamored with this world, to the point where it puts a strain on her marriage.  Meanwhile, her husband has been seeing visions, possibly of his dead daughter Christine (who wore a red cloak).  As the film progresses, his visions increase, where he's even seeing Laura, who is supposedly in England, throughout the city of Venice.  He starts to suspect that it's his daughter trying to contact him, but when he goes to the medium, she warns him, but it's too late.  The visions that John has been seeing are not of his late daughter or of his grieving wife, but of his own future.  When he confronts a hooded figure in a cloak, it isn't Christine but a killer dwarf, likely the serial killer that they've been mentioning in background scenes throughout the picture.

I'll be totally honest here-the first hour or so of this movie I was in the middle.  The film was kind of slow, and while it was fascinating, I could feel my attention waning.  The look at grief, and how it either becomes an obsession or it becomes something you can no longer ignore is interesting, and Christie & Sutherland were both very good, but I was wondering why this was considered a classic.  However, in the last twenty minutes you realize the investment you've had.  You start to understand that John has basically been trying anything to avoid confronting his own mortality, the fact that his daughter will never return, and that his marriage can never be the same.  That he does this while also getting hacked to bits, ignoring everything everyone around him has said in hopes of avoiding his grief is twisted...made even more so by the fact that with him gone, Laura will undoubtedly never really escape her grief, giving herself over to the existing-between-worlds path of the medium.

The sex scene is unusual not just because of the graphic nature of it and how long it works, but because to begin with, it doesn't have a lot of connection to the plot (Gen Z would have a field day with this if it was released today).  But it looks glorious (Sutherland & Christie look gorgeous...glad they caught that for posterity), and it also gives us a lot of insight into these characters.  They were once a scorching hot, sexy couple, ones who had hours-long sessions in the sack.  By the end of the film, that passion has been replaced by despair, and it shows that they can never get back.  All sex scenes in movies are necessary because sex is part of our lives & should be seen onscreen as a result, but this one is impressive because it informs us about the characters themselves.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist

1990's-Present: The Blair Witch Project, Scream

OVP: The Go-Between (1971)

Film: The Go-Between (1971)

Stars: Julie Christie, Edward Fox, Alaln Bates, Margaret Leighton, Michael Redgrave, Dominic Guard

Director: Joseph Losey

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Margaret Leighton)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

One of the weirder aspects of streaming services is that they have a ticking clock on some of their movies. Each month, because I'm crazy organized about such things, I peruse the list of films that are leaving the Netflix, Hulu, & Criterion platforms, and diligently check if any of them are ones I can't see somewhere else (and if so, I watch them, regardless of how random they might seem).  This last month that was the case with The Go-Between, a relatively forgotten film from 1971 that was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.  Based on a novel by LP Hartley, the movie is a tale of forbidden romance in turn of the century rural England.

(Spoilers Ahead) The story centers around Leo (Guard as a child, Redgrave as an adult) a young boy who is spending the summer at the country estate of his wealthier friend Marcus.  Marcus has the measles for most of that summer (which is fine by Leo as Marcus' favorite hobby is bullying Leo), and so Leo gets to befriend the adults, specifically Marcus' sister Marian (Christie) & a tenant farmer next door named Ted Burgess (Bates).  While Marian is expected to be engaged to the proper Viscount Trimingham (Fox), she is having a passionate, illicit affair with Ted, and Leo realizes this after reading one of the letters the two carry back-and-forth with each other.  The movie comes to a head when Marian's mother Lady Maudsley (Leighton) figures out what is happening by breaking Leo, and stops the affair, which ends with Ted killing himself & a forlorn Marian marrying Trimingham, though she doesn't love him in the same way.

This is exactly the sort of movie that I adore.  I am such a big fan of a slow build romance, one with clear stakes & ones where not everyone is going to come out of the movie unscathed (including our seemingly oblivious narrator).  In fact, upon writing that paragraph about the plot, I was almost convinced that I had misjudged this movie during my viewing of it, it so piqued my interest.  However, The Go-Between is not special, and it does not execute on its fine story well.  The movie is ridiculously slow-paced, to the point of nauseam (how many times can you watch Leo drop off a letter?), and the romance doesn't really work since Christie & Bates are basically supporting players in their own movie (you don't get invested in them because the filmmakers insist on keeping the movie entirely from Leo's perspective).  As a result the tragic ending, with an aging Marian trying to convince an older Leo that she did, in fact, love Ted (and basically stating to him that at least one of her children was the product of her relationship with Ted), doesn't fall through as you haven't properly invested in these characters.  A good idea, badly launched.

The movie's acting is all-over-the-board.  I thought that Guard was beyond insufferable (child acting in the 1970's might have been when the practice hit its nadir), and Christie/Bates (both game performers in a normal circumstance) underplay their parts and don't even try to insert some sex appeal into these roles.  Leighton was the Oscar nominee of the bunch, and there's a part of me that gets why she was cited.  After nearly two snail-paced hours, she comes out like a lioness, ready to pounce on the dullness we've been through, but there's no build.  She's clearly an aristocrat who has seen all, knows all, but she doesn't play her character like that in the early scenes...there's nothing and then everything.  She's not bad, but she doesn't instruct the audience to wait for her dragon lady.  As a result, this nomination feels less like it's for a great work or a scene-stealer, and more a burst-of-relief that someone is finally ending the monotony.

OVP: Afterglow (1997)

Film: Afterglow (1997)
Stars: Nick Nolte, Julie Christie, Lara Flynn Boyle, Jonny Lee Miller
Director: Alan Rudolph
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Julie Christie)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each cinematic era has its quirks, and you have to remember them, as oftentimes what feels like a weird aesthetic choice in the present was very common sense at the time.  Take, for example, Afterglow, where now-pop culture punching bag Nick Nolte is playing an aging lothario, who somehow has women throwing themselves at him despite, from my vantage point, having virtually no  sex appeal whatsoever.  This might sound cruel, and quite frankly it probably is, but considering it's a crux of this particular picture, you have to let it go (anyone want to take bets on which current leading man will come across as bizarre as a romantic love interest in the future?).  This is, however, one of many suspensions of belief in the very-90's Afterglow which scored a precursor-less nomination for Best Actress with Julie Christie over Jessica Lange & Pam Grier.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, by Alan Rudolph, reads a lot like a chamber play.  We have four central characters in the form of two couples.  There's the older of these two pairs, Phyllis (an aging B-movie actress played by Christie) and Lucky Mann (yes, that's really the name they give him with not enough of a wink, played by Nolte), who is an aging handyman who regularly sleeps with the women for whom he works.  The younger couple is Marianne (Boyle), a woman in a sexless marriage who wants a baby with her husband Jeffrey (Miller), a suicidal corporate executive who is struggling with some sort of crisis-of-faith, and also really has a thing for older women.  The movie unfolds with the pairs starting to intermingle, with Lucky & Marianne starting an affair, while Jeffrey has an emotional fling with Phyllis.

The film would feel pretty standard-fare on the stage, and probably would work better there as it could handle the "too much plot" angle a bit better.  Here, though, they gloss over many of the essential details and perhaps should have worked better on where to focus the story.  For starters, with the exception of Christie, none of these roles really work in hindsight.  Even suspending belief for a moment, it's hard to picture Nolte's handyman as being something of a sex symbol.  He's haggard, not-particularly-attractive, and has little actual charm other than being able to carry out a series of double entendres with a woman shoving her bosom in his face.  That's literally it, and it's a problem in particular because none of this movie really works if you don't buy that multiple different women are madly in love with Nolte's Lucky Mann, and I never did.

But this is only part of the problem.  Even if you're like "to each his own," the younger couple is all kinds of messed up.  Boyle brings nothing to this role other than looking thin in a negligee, and her  marriage to Jeffrey is absurd-how the hell was he nice enough to her to begin with to have us buy that she actually would marry him; they're both attractive, but these two play so polar opposite and so bitter it's impossible to imagine them ever finding each other desirable.  There's not even a sign from either actor that this is a George-and-Martha, where time has made them bitter, but instead every indication they've always been like this.  Then there's Miller, who only brings a blank handsomeness to his Jeffrey, and clearly cannot connect to his scripted mother obsession.  Bennett doesn't help him at all by casting Christie, who even in her early 60's looks decades younger and is the sort of beautiful that only an aging movie star can be.  As an audience member, you think less when he's enamored with her that "he has a thing for older women" and more "yeah, I'd try for that too."  Miller's the weakest link here, which is a bad sign (as Nolte & Boyle are giving bad performances), mostly because you leave knowing virtually nothing about him except what's on the page, and there's a lot on the page left for him to handle (homophobia, loss of libido, issues with masculinity), but he can't connect with any of it.  It's am embarrassingly bad piece of work, and perhaps a sign of why his star never took off like his movie star wife Angelina Jolie's.

The sole redeeming factor is Christie, who is still able to manage endless movie memories with her face still the ethereal beauty of our Lara (fun fact-Boyle is named after Christie's character in Doctor Zhivago).  Here she's playing a B-movie actress and has some fun with the script, which is a juicy part.  She lands some of the absurd comedy of the role, and the scenes where she's struggling with her betrayal of Lucky years previously, and the deadness that resulted from her having to give up her daughter, are solid work.  But there's still a lot missing in this performance, which is kind of why I was shocked after watching the film that it landed the Oscar nomination over showier parts like Lange, Grier, or Julia Roberts big comeback in My Best Friend's Wedding.  You don't buy the film's climax, where she's upset with Lucky for breaking their agreement, perhaps because you never buy them as a couple who cares about one another, or understand why they never broke up.  Christie feels too detached in her scenes where she isn't pining for a time gone by or trying to charm a charmless Miller.  Some might market this as a diamond in the rough, but it's really more the vanilla sitting between the arsenic and cyanide-it's the only item on the menu that's not going to kill you.

OVP: Actress (2007)

OVP: Best Actress (2007)

The Nominees Were...

Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie, Away from Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno

My Thoughts: It's strange to think that one of my favorite categories at the Oscars, the Best Actress field, was so atypically weak in one of Oscar's best years (by far the finest of the ones we've profiled so far), but it's hard not to look at the above photos and realize that 2007 wasn't a high water-mark for this category when remembering these performances as a collective.  Surely these are all good actresses, with all but one of them nominated for another film in addition to 2007, but it's hard to look at anyone here as doing the best work of their career save Page, who hasn't really done anything since that can compare.  Either way, I profile through the good and the bad, and there is admittedly some good to be had here, particularly when it comes to Julie Christie's brief comeback vehicle in Away from Her.

Comeback is probably the wrong term for Christie, however, as this was hardly a marked return and in a way many thought she'd simply retire from acting after this (considering the dearth of good movie roles she had in the following years, perhaps that would have been for the best).  Christie's Fiona is a thing of beauty, as is her performance.  I love the way she still uses certain attributes that are innate to her (her beauty, her charm, her confidence) far after her memories have started to fade.  The performance is at once very cerebral and physical, and she uses her movie star quality to quickly connect to the audience, Lara disappearing before our eyes.  I love the chemistry she has with Pinsent, and how she still comes of age even as her life is slipping away.  It's a breathtaking, raw performance and one of her best, a great testament to how certain actors never lose their gifts.

Her main competitor for the Oscar at the time seemed to be Marion Cotillard, who was the ingenue in the field and ended up being a major, major talent in the years that followed, taking on the baton that Juliette Binoche had left in terms of "French actress that American audiences are enamored with."  Cotillard is one of my favorite performers of the past decade, but I'll be the first person to admit that I didn't really get this, and I think it's the least of her celebrated roles.  She physically takes on Edith Piaf, but it borders into the hammy, and I don't really think I know Piaf the consummate professional, as Cotillard plays her more as a freak-of-nature style singer, someone who can belt to the rafters but is otherwise a figure of constant tragedy.  She isn't helped by the movie being standard-fare "famous musician biopic," but this is just a large performance, not a particularly good one.  Add in that the best part of her performance, the singing, is done by Piaf and not by her and I will admit this leaves me lacking.

Another world-class actress giving a performance that screams to the heavens is Cate Blanchett.  Our double nominee (she was just in our Supporting Actress lineup), this is hardly the master class of acting that I'm Not There shows itself to be, instead Blanchett becomes a massive tower of camp at her best, and hammily sunk by a self-important script at worst.  Her best actual acting is the film's light comedy bits, particularly those involving her being courted by foreign princes, and I will admit it's fun to watch her scenery-chewing when she gives speeches like "I too can command the winds sir!", but this is not great acting or a performance that should be celebrated outside of an episode of Drag Race.  Even Blanchett herself appeared somewhat embarrassed by the nomination when the clip played at the Oscars that year.  Let's chalk it up to Cate love and remember she genuinely earned most of her other nominations.

Laura Linney had previously lost to Blanchett in 2004 for Kinsey, and she went home empty-handed yet again for The Savages.  This film was just so-so but I remember being truly struck by Linney's Wendy at the time, the way that she plays her as someone who has a completely different internal vision of herself than what she projects to the world and what she actually was.  It's a difficult part to play, and she inhabits years of disappointment with her life onscreen with refreshing honesty-Wendy is a character you root for, but one that you're uncomfortable with their decisions, and Linney knows that.  Linney hasn't really done anything onscreen that remotely approaches this work (keeping her best stuff for television), but this is a reminder of what a dynamic powerhouse of an actor she can be when given the chance.

Finally we have Ellen Page, playing the iconic Juno in the self-titled film.  Page does such a sure job taking on Diablo Cody's very specific script that I worried for a while after this performance that she'd be typecast (this was not the case, in fact she's never played a part similar), as it's a very confident, extroverted performance that wears well on re-viewing.  I did feel at times that Page gets lost in the words, not entirely understanding where Juno herself is coming from in a scene or whether she's just playing off of the script, but her best scenes, particularly that great final monologue about Jennifer Garner's character and her sublime interactions with Allison Janney and JK Simmons, are what make this movie work so well and make her performance so special.  She may never do anything quite this sensational again, but it's a cool nomination.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Golden Globes of course split their nominations between Drama and Comedy/Musical, but even though that happened weirdly Laura Linney was nowhere to be seen (they clearly had caught the picture as Philip Seymour Hoffman had been cited for the film in Best Actor).  Christie emerged victorious in Drama over Blanchett, Keira Knightley (Atonement), Angelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart), and Jodie Foster (The Brave One), while Cotillard was the champion in Comedy/Musical (emphasis on the musical in her case, as La Vie en Rose struggles for even a single laugh), besting Page, Amy Adams (Enchanted), Helena Bonham Carter (Sweeny Todd), and Nikki Blonsky (Hairspray).  BAFTA also threw out Linney, keeping in Knightley (Cotillard won), while the SAG Awards favored Jolie over Linney (Christie won).  All-in-all, I remember at the time that Jolie was the shocking exclusion for A Mighty Heart, but don't forget how rare it is for women to miss for Best Picture nominees-Knightley was probably closer than we initially considered.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I definitely would have included Knightley if I were making this list.  Her performance in Atonement is classic full-bodied, breathy Keira as we know and love her, and I'm just a huge fan in general, but I'd argue this is her best performance to date (she was the threat for my own personal win that year, coming in second).  I also think it's bizarre considering the Academy's love for Amy Adams that they skipped over one of her more iconic roles, as Princess Giselle is a delightful skewering of Disney all-the-while keeping her character likable and real in her own reality.  It's not the sort of thing that ever gets nominated, save for Mary Poppins, but it should have been.  Finally, we have Tang Wei, who gave a sultry, sexy, and marvelous performance in Lust, Caution, and then was banned from acting for a few years by the Chinese government.  The performance itself was worthy enough, that she was later banned from acting was a heinous act of censorship, and it'd have been nice if AMPAS had killed two birds with one stone by nominating her, as she was worthy AND it would have struck a blow to governments banning art.

Oscar’s Choice: 2007 was a genuinely close race.  Cotillard and Christie dominated the precursors, but I do recall Page getting a last-minute push from the press to take the trophy.  Cotillard won, in what was yet another "deglam" victory in 2007, but I think the other two were nipping at her heels.

My Choice: A pretty easy victory for Julie Christie, the only performance I truly loved of this bunch. I'll follow her up with Linney, Page, Blanchett, and Cotillard in back.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are you with me in the Team Christie camp or are your Edith Piaf records doing a scratch right about now?  Anyone think that Ellen Page will ever get another nomination, or is she in the one-and-done club forever?  And was it Knightley or Jolie that was in sixth place?  Sound off in the comments!

Also in 2007: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2007

Past Best Actress Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

BAFTA Nominations ≠ Oscar Nominations: Part 2

Where we last left off, we had discussed the actors who had most been rewarded at the BAFTAs but persistently snubbed by the Oscars, and we were all a bit ticked off on Dirk Bogarde and Mia Farrow’s behalf’s.

Now, though, let’s investigate the actors that Oscar did in fact have something of a crush on, even though BAFTA was far more impressed.  Just like before, here are the tiebreakers:

1. If an actor received multiple nominations for different films in the same year, that counted as less for the rankings.

2. If the actor won a BAFTA Award for one of their performances.

3. If an actor received their nomination as a “British Actor” rather than the more all inclusive category.

10. Simone Signoret

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Room at the Top, Ship of Fools)

Nominated for Just Oscar: None

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 4 (Casque d’Or, The Crucible, The Deadly Affair, Games)

Winner? 1 Oscar (Room at the Top) and 3 BAFTA’s (Casque d’Or, The Crucible, Room at the Top)

Closest She Got to Another: Most likely none…if I had to pick one, maybe Deadly Affair?

Signoret is one of those foreign film actors that BAFTA became obsessed with during its early run, giving her multiple nominations for films that are little seen in the United States even now, much less when they originally ran, so Oscar probably didn’t notice aside from his two films that he nominated the French leading lady for.  I put Deadly Affair as most likely just because it did quite well with BAFTA, and had a lot of Academy favorites above and below the title (James Mason, Maximilian Schell, Sidney Lumet, Paul Dehn, Freddie Young) and sometimes that’s what it takes to get a nomination.

9. Gene Hackman

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (The French Connection, Unforgiven)

Nominated for Just Oscar: 3 (Bonnie and Clyde, I Never Sang for My Father, Mississippi Burning)

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (The Poseidon Adventure, The Conversation, The French Connection II, Night Moves, Superman)

Winner? 2 Oscars (The French Connection, Unforgiven) and 2 BAFTA’s (Dual win for French Connection/Poseidon Adventure and Unforgiven)

Closest He Got to Another: The Conversation

Hackman is one of only two actors to show up on our nominated but royally-missed actors at the Globes and the BAFTAs, and what’s even more bizarre is that three of his films at the BAFTAs (and three of his films here) didn’t get nominated.  Perhaps I’m underestimating the power of The French Connection II, since Hackman got Globe and BAFTA nominations for both, but I feel like he had a better shot for the Best Picture-nominated The Conversation.  The BAFTAs kept him in favor of Dustin Hoffman in Lenny and Art Carney in Harry and Tonto (who inexplicably won the Oscar) and the Globes skipped Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express, so while everyone had a precursor to tout, Hackman had more.

8. Sir Ralph Richardson

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 1 (Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes)

Nominated for Just Oscar: 1 (The Heiress)

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (The Sound Barrier, Doctor Zhivago, Khartoum, The Wrong Box, Lady Caroline Lamb)

Winner?: No Oscars, but he won the BAFTA for The Sound Barrier

Closest He Got to Another: Doctor Zhivago?

It has been many, many years since I last saw Doctor Zhivago and I have never seen Greystoke, so the next two observations are more “on-paper” than anything else, but considering how popular Zhivago was with the Academy, it’s safe to assume that Richardson’s next nomination probably would have come from that movie.  It should be noted, though, that the acting branch wasn’t wild for the film-despite major precursors for different actors (Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Ralph Richardson, and Geraldine Chaplin) it only got one Oscar nomination, and oddly for none of those four actors (it was for Tom Courtenay).

I will also say that I wonder, had he still been alive, whether Richardson would have been a threat for winning with Greystoke.  The 1980’s were the peak of “old age” Oscars (something we see less and less of today, particularly with more and more people winning Honorary Oscars at the Governor’s Ball), and names like Henry Fonda, Don Ameche, Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, and Jessica Tandy all took home Oscars in the twilight of their careers.  Had they had another speech to enjoy from the witty Richardson, perhaps his name would have been on that list.

7. Lord Laurence Olivier

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 3 (all of these counts are just for acting, as clearly Olivier won nominations for other things during his career) Richard III, The Entertainer, Sleuth

Nominated for Just Oscar: 7 (to be fair, the bulk of these were before the BAFTA Awards existed) Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Henry V, Hamlet, Othello, Marathon Man, The Boys from Brazil

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (Carrie, The Prince and the Showgirl, The Devil’s Disciple, Term of Trial, Oh! What a Lovely War)

Winner?: Olivier won one acting Oscar for Hamlet and picked up two BAFTA’s for Richard III and Oh! What a Lovely War

Closest He Got to Another: Carrie, probably

This is of course a tad bit ridiculous, as Olivier scored just as often with the Oscars as BAFTA and he’s one of the most rewarded men in the history of the Best Actor category.  That said, of course, he still had a relatively strong following in his native land, and especially during the 1950’s (when Olivier wasn’t as en vogue with Oscar) he seemed to do quite well.  Carrie was my selection more because it was one of the only films here that Oscar noticed, giving it Best Art Direction and Costume nominations, and Olivier’s costar was Oscar winner Jennifer Jones, so a film with two Academy favorites had to at least have been on the radar of Oscar.

6. Peter Finch

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Sunday Bloody Sunday, Network)

Nominated for Just Oscar: None

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (A Town Like Alice, Windom’s Way, The Nun’s Story, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, No Love for Johnnie)

Winner? 1 Oscar (for Network, the only posthumous Oscar for acting until Heath Ledger) and 5 BAFTAs (A Town Like Alice, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, No Love for Johnnie, Sunday Bloody Sunday, and Network)

Closest He Got to Another: Probably none-maybe The Nun’s Story?

Finch was one of those British actors who got so big in his native country that Oscar had to notice one time or another, and they did, late in his career.  By that point, though, thanks to the split British Actor categories, his place on this list was cemented.  I’ve always been curious what would have happened if he hadn’t died before Network.  He didn’t have an Oscar, so they may have just given him the trophy anyway (Howard Beale is a character not to be denied), but his fellow nominees, particularly costar William Holden and Best Picture lead Sylvester Stallone both look really strong for the win on paper if Finch didn’t have some sympathy factor in his direction.  Either way, I think that The Nun’s Story was his best shot of the misses, not because of his performance per say, but because the film, which was nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, is the only one I can guarantee the bulk of the Academy saw in that year.

Julie Christie with fellow snubee
Dirk Bogarde

5. Julie Christie

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Darling, Away From Her)

Nominated for Just Oscar: 2 (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Afterglow)

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (Billy Liar, Doctor Zhivago, Fahrenheit 451, The Go-Between, Don’t Look Now, Finding Neverland)

Winner? She has one Oscar and one BAFTA, both for Darling

Closest She Got to Another: Tough call-maybe Billy Liar?

Julie Christie is such an iconic, beautiful actress of the 1960’s (…good reference, says Jessa), that you forget that she’s also one of Oscar’s most enduring actresses, being one of the few performers to score a nomination in four separate decades of her career.  It’s easier to make the argument that she came close to winning a second Oscar or BAFTA than to say she was on-track to get another nomination with Oscar (and quite frankly, if she was going to get another one I think it would have been for 1975’s Shampoo over any of the films that she got for BAFTA), but if I had to take a guess it’d be for Billy Liar.  The film was a hit and made Christie a star (she would have made it for supporting actress at Oscar, rather than lead like BAFTA, as they didn’t have supporting yet), but if the Academy hadn’t been so enamored with Tom Jones (which took 60% of the nominees in that category that year), Christie may have made it.

4. Shirley MacLaine

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 3 (The Apartment, Irma la Douce, Being There)

Nominated for Just Oscar: (again, for acting only) 2 (Some Came Running, The Turning Point)

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (The Trouble with Harry, Ask Any Girl, What a Way to Go!, Being There, Postcards from the Edge, Steel Magnolias)

Winner? 1 Oscar (Terms of Endearment) and 2 BAFTAs (Ask Any Girl and The Apartment)

Closest She Got to Another: Postcards from the Edge

If you look at the Globes and BAFTA lists together, Mia Farrow is clearly the actor who was most screwed out of an actual nomination at some point in her career, making second place on both lists.  If you look at the people Oscar actually blessed with nominations, though, it’s hard not to feel like MacLaine was royally snubbed.  She topped the Globes list and manages to be the highest-ranking non Brit on this list, so you have to continually ask-what did Oscar have against MacLaine?  It doesn’t seem like it would have been the politics (Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda regularly got nominated during the same period).  You don’t hear a lot about her being particularly difficult to work with (and again, Brando was nominated).

Either way, Postcards seems to be the biggest miss-Diane Ladd did some interesting work in Wild at Heart, but it seems stunning that the more traditional MacLaine didn’t make it instead.  Perhaps there was category confusion (she was lead with BAFTA, after all)?  That’s about the only thing I can think of to explain it.

3. Dame Maggie Smith

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Room at the Top, Ship of Fools)

Nominated for Just Oscar: 2 (Othello, Travels with My Aunt)

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (Young Cassidy, Death on the Nile, Quartet­-though the one from 1981, not the recent one, oddly enough, A Private Function, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Tea with Mussolini)

Winner? 2 Oscars (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, California Suite) and 5 BAFTAs (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A Private Function, A Room with a View, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Tea with Mussolini)

Closest She Got to Another: None of these films, but she’s been very close before

Smith is one of my all-time favorite actresses of any era, and you don’t get enough chance to write about her in film anymore, so I relish the idea of doing so here.  The first really noteworthy thing about this list is that she’s made two films with the same name (Quartet, both of which landed her a precursor nomination and neither of which won her an Oscar nod)-can anyone think of another actor that’s done that without it being a remake/winking cameo?

Like Julie Christie, it’s easier to make an argument that Smith was closer to another Oscar win (A Room with a View, where she was fighting it out royally with Dianne Wiest and pulled off both the Globe and the BAFTA) than another nomination, particularly for these films.  You may recall she was definitely in the running for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and many people (including myself) expected her to score a nomination for that movie over Jacki Weaver in Silver Linings Playbook.  Perhaps the lack of a BAFTA nod should have been a telling sign to us all to look elsewhere?

Delliott with his Room with a View costar Judi Dench

2. Denholm Elliot

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 1 (A Room with a View)

Nominated for Just Oscar: None

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (A Doll’s House, Saint Jack, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Trading Places, A Private Function, Defence of the Realm)

Winner? No Oscars, though he did pull off back-to-back-to-back wins for Trading Places, A Private Function, and Defence of the Realm (and A Room with a View was his fourth in that series, which he missed for but considering the film scored almost everywhere else, you know he was close).

Closest He Got to Another: You tell me.

The Denholm Elliot thing escapes probably a lot of us (well, me at least)-I hadn’t realized quite what a star the actor was in his native Britain before he managed to land a nod for Room with a View and become a noted supporting player in the Indiana Jones series as Marcus Brody.  Raiders was the only one of his BAFTA only films to make a major impression on the Academy, but the series never scored an Oscar nomination for acting despite a plethora of citations elsewhere, and one assumes that Harrison Ford or Sean Connery were more likely to score than Elliot if they did get a nomination.  His other work was very “British” (and not in a David Lean/James Ivory sort of way), so I don’t know that he would have gotten in for any of this latter two wins.  Trading Places did get an Oscar nomination (for score), but it’s not the sort of thing the Academy goes for, even in the 1980’s when it would have been a hit.

1. Dame Judi Dench

Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 6 (Mrs. Brown, Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat, Iris, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Notes on a Scandal)

Nominated for Just Oscar: None

Nominated for Just BAFTA: 7 (Wetherby, A Room with a View, 84 Charing Cross Road, A Handful of Dust, The Shipping News, My Week with Marilyn, Skyfall)

Winner? 1 Oscar (Shakespeare in Love) and 5 BAFTAs for film (A Room with a View, A Handful of Dust, Mrs. Brown, Shakespeare in Love, Iris)

Closest She Got to Another: The Shipping News, maybe?

Each of these lists has been won by someone clearly at the top of the heap-someone who is either obviously beloved by the one awards body or shamefully snubbed by AMPAS (depending on how you want to look at it).  With seven additional nominations (and two wins for those performances), Dench is obviously that candidate, and I suspect we all knew she’d be at the pole position.

Dench’s career is bizarre of course because she became a major film star late, late in her career.  She’d had a long and distinguished couple of decades in theater and television before Mrs. Brown managed to pop her onto the international circuit (it’s worth mentioning she was a noted supporting player in Britain for film at this time).  Had she been DAME JUDI DENCH in the eyes of the world in 1986, A Room with a View surely would have gotten her her first Oscar nomination, but I think it’s safe to assume she came the closest during one of her peak fame years: either The Shipping News or Skyfall, with The Shipping News’s SAG nomination breaking the tie for me.  With Philomena coming out in a few weeks, she’s the only actor on this list who seems guaranteed to add to her numbers soon-will it be for BAFTA, Oscar, or both is the question?

Those are the top ten-what is the most surprising name on the list?  Who do you think came the closest overall to another nomination (I’m torn between Smith and MacLaine)?  Who deserved another nomination the most?  And what part should they have cast Shirley MacLaine in in A Room with a View, since clearly the top three found success with it?  Share in the comments!